1. Field
Embodiments of the invention relate to parental control of digital content. More specifically, one embodiment of the invention relates to an apparatus and method for elimination of unwanted content on a scene-by-scene basis.
2. General Background
Television is used to deliver content, such as entertainment and educational programs, to viewers. A growing number of parents are now watching and listening to content perceived by their children, in an effort to better mitigate their exposure to objectionable content, namely violence, sexual situations, indecent or suggestive language and the like.
Currently, with respect to the rendering of video programs, televisions are implemented with a V-chip, which may be set by parents to preclude the playback of programs that exceed a selected age-based rating. A black screen is shown for any program that exceeds the selected age-based rating in order to prevent such viewing. This program blocking can be disabled with a parental password.
There are a number of major shortcomings of the V-chip. For instance, the V-chip filters only at the program level, namely a viewer gets to view the entire program or nothing at all. In other words, there are no intermediate levels of blocking, which prevents the playback of certain programs that would be appropriate and perhaps educational for children if certain images or audio were eliminated. Also, how programs are rated is still a subjective task, and the assigned ratings may not be consistent with the views of certain parents. As an example, some programs with violence or drug use may receive a lower rating than programs with indecent language, but certain parents might consider violence to be more objectionable. Yet another V-chip shortcoming is that it is unable to filter commercials or other advertisements, news clips or live sporting events since this content is not rated.
The marketplace already features filters, but none of which provide any capability of scene-to-scene filtering and content replacement. For instance, a CLEARPLAY® DVD player from RCA has the ability to use downloadable filters synchronized to the playback of the DVD to squelch violence, nudity, swearing and other content that some may find objectionable. However, this product is directed to DVD video data streams.
Another filter is a language filter from TVGuardian, which operates only on audio. This filter relies on closed captioning information to automatically detect and filter audio which some might find objectionable. When objectionable audio is detected, sound is muted and alternate closed captioning text is displayed on the screen. No video blocking is offered.